Edmund Spenser

Edmund Spenser (1552-13 January 1599) was an English poet who was best known for his 1590 epic poem The Faerie Queene, an allegorical praise of Elizabeth I of England.

Biography
Edmund Spenser was born in London, England in 1552, and he came from a family of modest means and station. He studied at the Merchant Taylors' School under the humanist Richard Mulcaster and then enrolled as a "sizar" (poor scholar) at Pembroke College, Cambridge, where he translated some poems for a volume of anti-Catholic propaganda. He befriended the Cambridge don and pamphleteer Gabriel Harvey, and they shared an interest in the reformation of English verse. Spenser received a bachelor's degree in 1573 and a master's degree in 1576, and he served as personal secretary and aide to several prominent men, including Queen Elizabeth I of England's favorite Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester. In 1579, he published The Shepheardes Calender in honor of Sir Philip Sidney, who sought to reform English poetry, and he went on to create the "Spenserian sonnet", a nine-line stanza with a six-stress (hexameter) line at the end. In 1580, Spenser went to Ireland as secretary and aide to Arthur Grey, 14th Baron Grey de Wilton, Lord Deputy of Ireland, and he spent the rest of his career in Ireland, holding various minor government posts and participating in the struggle against the Irish rebels. Spenser wrote A View of the Present State of Ireland, which recommended ruthless anti-Irish policies while also stating a fascination with the Irish culture. Spenser was rewarded for his efforts in Ireland with a castle and 3,028 acres of exporpirated land at Kilcolman in Munster, where he was visited by Walter Raleigh. With Raleigh's backing, Spenser travelled to England and pubished the first three books of The Faerie Queene in 1590, making a strong bid for the Queen's favor and patronage. He was granted a handsome pension of fifty pounds a year for life,  and he began to write poems about court life. In 1596, he published the six-book Faerie Queene. In 1598, his home in Munster was burned down by Irish rebels, and Munster fled with his wife while their newborn baby died in the flames. Spenser was sent to England with messages from the besieged English garrison, and he died on 13 January 1599 and was buried near Geoffrey Chaucer in the Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey.